MLB: Phillies let win slip through their fingers

AP Photo
The Phillies’ Darin Ruf is forced out at second base as the White Sox’s Gordon Beckham completes the double play on a Carlos Ruiz grounder in the fourth inning during Game 1 of a doubleheader on Saturday in Philadelphia.

PHILADELPHIA — Game 1 of the Phillies’ doubleheader against the White Sox Saturday summed up the first half of the season — a slow-moving, frustrating tease of a game that interfered with other joyful activities and ended with painful injury news.

After showing great potential for happiness when Darin Ruf’s seventh-inning home run tied the game and the Phillies had runners on second and third with no outs in the ninth, the game unraveled in three sad at-bats, a two-run top of the 11th by the White Sox and a game-ending double play by Ben Revere, as the Phils flopped, 5-4.

Throw in a 41-minute rain delay when a storm cloud literally formed overtop Citizens Bank Park in the top of the ninth inning, then word after the game that Ben Revere broke his right foot on the final at-bat of the game, and it made for a quintessential 2013 Phillies outing.

Even after J.C. Ramirez gave up two runs in the top of the 11th, one of which was helped in by Jimmy Rollins’ fielding error, the Phils had a chance to keep the game going.

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Ruf, who continues to shamelessly rake since getting called up to replace an injured Ryan Howard, mashed a leadoff double off White Sox closer Addison Reed. After Carlos Ruiz, who took a foul tip off his neck in the seventh inning, grounded weakly to third for the first out, Ruf scored on Humberto Quintero’s pinch-single.

That gave Revere, who entered the game hitting .411 since June 12, a shot to put the tying run in scoring position. However, he fouled the first pitch off his foot and crumpled to the ground for a moment. He managed to get back on his feet, then grounded to third. Normally the speedy center fielder would have beat out the relay throw, but with his foot broken from the foul, the White Sox were able to turn the double play and the Phils had to turn to John Lannan in the hopes of getting a series-rescuing split.

How long they will be without Revere and how Manuel will replace him beyond the start John Mayberry Jr. got in the nightcap remain a mystery. Tyson Gillies struggled so horrendously in Triple-A early on that he had to be demoted to Double-A Reading before being recently sent back to Lehigh Valley. The organization had started to experiment in center with Cesar Hernandez, who started a handful of games at second base while Chase Utley was on the disabled list. Freddy Galvis was given some face time in the outfield late in spring training and in a couple of games in the big leagues before he was sent back to the minors to get steadier playing time.

Ironically, Revere wouldn’t have hurt himself if the Phillies could have taken advantage of a huge opportunity in the ninth.

“I don’t have to tell you how many chances we had,” Charlie Manuel said, perplexed by Ruiz and Laynce Nix being unable to bring in the winning run after White Sox reliever Nate Jones gave up singles to Kevin Frandsen and Ruf, then balked both runners along to put the winning run 90 feet away after the rain delay in the ninth. “We had some golden chances. All we had to do was hit the ball, and we couldn’t do it. The game was sitting there for us, two or three times, and we couldn’t do it.”

Ruiz, who has been performing miserably at the plate all season, hit a weak fly ball on which Kevin Frandsen had no hope of tagging up. Nix, who is 8-for-54 since having a huge April, including 3-for-30 as a pinch-hitter, could have been intentionally walked to load the bases and give the White Sox a force at the plate with Revere coming up. That Chicago decided there was no need to do that tells you what manager Robin Ventura thought about Nix. It turned out he was correct. Revere followed with a groundout that wasted a scoring chance for the second straight frame.

Jones seemed to be in trouble after Ventura curiously had him return to the mound after he struck out Delmon Young on a 100 mph fastball to end the eighth, then waited nearly an hour to throw another pitch because of the rain. But the Phillies let him off the hook.

Asked if either Nix or Young should have been more willing to shorten their swings and put a ball in play against Jones, Manuel reminded reporters that these are young pups they are talking about.

“They swing,” Manuel said. “They don’t work on choke-and-poke. Their contact (swing) is when they take the ball the other way. But they don’t cut their swing down. That’s what they’ve been doing their whole careers. You don’t want to strike out in those situations. Ted Williams choked up, so if it was good enough for Ted, that’s good enough for me.

“We didn’t have the finishing touch. Things were definitely going our way. We had a guy make a balk, a ball was hit past Adam Dunn (for an error in the 10th). We had some big things going for us. But we couldn’t put the finishing touch on it.”